Sarge Fit - Personal Trainer Review

This weeks Personal Trainer review is of Sarge Fit, a Personal Trainer in Bradford (also covering Leeds, Halifax and Huddersfield). In this review, we let Sarge Fits clients do the talking

SargeFit showed incredible knowledge of fitness and physiology. I had
been attending a gym for 6 months prior to my session with SargeFit,
following the implementation of SargeFits training regime I felt like I
had had a tremendous workout, muscles were aching that I didn’t know
even exsisted. I have achieved more with a few weeks of SargeFits
training than I did with 6 months at the gym under a fitness trainer.
Hats off to the Sarge! Highly reccomend him.
Jason - Queensbury

I am a 42 year old male who was 3 stone overweight and who hadn’t
exercised for many years. I finally decided it was time to sort things
out, but like many people, I lack both the knowledge and motivation to
do it all myself. That is why I decided to find a personal trainer to
advise me. Having spoken to many in my local area I chose Mark at
Sargefit. We hit it off straight away at my initial assessment session.

I found Mark to be highly professional and extremely knowledgeable. He
put together a structured training programme targeting weight loss,
building strength and stamina and increasing my overall levels of
fitness. This programme was tailored to my own individual needs and
goals and I found it both realistic and easy to follow. Mark’s dietry
advise was invaluable and very educational. By being more aware of the
sort of foods that I should and shouldn’t eat and also altering when I
ate made big difference to my weight loss. Once we had agreed on my
specific targets we scheduled at least one training session per week.
Mark’s a great motivator and I really looked forward to these sessions
which were always varied and fun to do.

In between sessions Mark was always available either for advice,
support or encouragement. After 3 months we decided it was time for me
to go it alone and I’m well on my way to achieving my goals. I still see
Mark for the odd hour just to freshen up my training programme and to
prevent me from falling behind. Overall I would say that without Mark’s
knowledge, advice, motivation and support I wouldn’t have achieved all
that I have. I’ve lost most of the weight I wanted to lose and I feel
great. The experience has been enjoyable, educational and very
beneficial, and for me represents terrific value for money. As such I
wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Sargefit to anyone looking to lose weight
and improve their health and fitness, especially if like me they had
already tried and failed to do it alone.
Adrian - Bradford

Visit Sarge Fits website at http://www.sargefit.co.uk/ 
or phone 07525 139001.

Consistency - To become well known in your field, you must be consistent

Many Personal Trainers want to be the ‘go to’ man (or woman) in their area, but how do you achieve this, especially if you’re new to Personal Training?

Well you must be consistent in your marketing activity!
Their are plenty of people who make the effort for a few months then give up when all is not working as they would like. Well this is where the truly consistent marketer will win everytime. When all is looking like a waste of time, the consistent marketer succeeds by continuing their efforts.

Remember it will pay off! People will eventually start to associate you with your field, and as soon as this starts to happen, your efforts win through!

So….
Keep your Personal Trainer website upto date
Keep your email newsletters regular
Keep your blog posts interesting and bookmark them and email your database that you’ve updated your blog
Keep your advertising consistent and upto date
Always use your brand in all your marketing
Submit articles to local newspapers and post on forums as often as possible!
These are just a few things you should be doing!

January’s Over! Dont forget the basics!

WTF happened to January!!! LOL! My god that went quickly! I didnt even get to blog much during Jan, it just disappeared!

So, How was January for you? Was it a busy start to the New Year? Did you get plenty of new clients and fresh enquiries? Did you get the enquiries who didnt take sessions with you, subscribed to your social network? Have you started building your email list? Have you made sure your business cards are actually working for you and helping you stand out from the crowd? Have you started  optimising your website for Google?  & are you making sure you arent missing out on easy revenue!

Remember to always check that you are doing the basics! Perhaps NOW is a good time to review my FREE Personal Trainer Marketing Plan! Over 100 Personal Trainers have now downloaded it!

Oh and remember to post in the Personal Trainer Forum

Looking for New Clients? Don’t forget the Old Ones!

Throughout 2009 you will have had email enquiries that never took Personal Training with you. You will also have had clients who stopped training with you for one reason or another. This is an ideal place to start when you’re looking for new clients.

2010 will of seen many of them make New Year Resolutions and whats the betting one of these is to get back in shape!

Do THREE Things

1) Drop them an email, text and / or phone call wishing them a Happy New Year.

2) Include a brief mention of your latest PT Offer. e.g. Oh, by the way, did you see on my website i have an offer just for ex PT clients offering 20% off a block of 12 Personal Training sessions if bought in January?

3) Ask them to subscribe to your social media network, Your Email Newsletter, Linked In, Facebook and Twitter at least. Get them in your Information Loop, They may not buy today, but there’s always tomorrow!

Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents P*ss Poor Performance

I new my years in the army weren’t wasted. Tonnes of crazy abbreviations and sayings locked in my memory for life!
But their is method to the madness. Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents P*ss Poor Performance!

Personal Trainers all have diaries to book in their clients sessions, but 99% off trainers are missing one MAJOR thing!
The main marketing dates!

If you plan these in now, you’ll be one step ahead of your competition

Hopefully you’ve already got your marketing ready and sorted for January 1st and all those New Year resolutions?

Here are all those important dates, give yourself a good couple of weeks prior to plan your marketing activity…

1 - New Year Resolutions - Make sure you are advertising your services online and offline to reap the rewards of all these people seeking your services

2 - January 31st /February 1st - Most peoples first pay day in the New Year. People are flush with cash again and you will see a second wave of people who have made resolutions take up Personal Training. An ideal time to boost your online pay per click marketing

3 - February 14th - Valentines Day - Get your mrs / girlfriend a gift and get marketing to all those who need to buy their partners a gift - remember!!! This is the biggest day for wedding proposals!!! Get marketing your Wedding Packages NOW

4 - March to September - Spring and Summer Wedding season! Are your wedding packages on your website?

5 - April 1st to 24th July - The start of the 6 weeks summer holiday period - work back 12 weeks from 24th July, thats April 1st!! get your 12 weeks of fitness programs launched
Think boot camps! think group training!

6 - Sept to March - Autumn and Winter Wedding season - people are looking to start working out indoors, so you need to change your wedding marketing plans.

7 - December - Bloody hell its christmas again! here we go again! PT as a christmas gift!

Other opportunities to advertise include….

Babies  - Mothers wanting to get back in shape, remember think pre and post natal.
S.A.D Seasonal Affective Disorder - market to those suffering from winter blues.
Ski season - PT for people going on ski holidays (think of other sports specific training too, e.g. Improve your golf through core stability etc)

What have i missed?…

Manage Your Accounts Better

Accounting, I know its the boring bit, but we all have to do it and it helps us ensure we’re all profitable!
It helps us see how much we’re earning each month, what our expenses were and ensures we keep a track of who owes us what. So why do most of us ignore our accounting? Because until now its never been straight forward.

I’ve personally used Quickbooks and Sage in the past. It took me several months to actually get my head around using quickbooks properly, but when i changed my computer to a new version i found i had lost my disc with quickbooks on and i’d have to buy a new version.  So i did a bit of research on what accounting products were available and how easy they are to use and i came across Kash Flow.  

I thought i’d share this with you all as i know how frustrating and time consuming doing your accounts can be.

The benefits of Kash Flow are..

1) Totally Online - Means you dont need to download anything, buy (and lose) a disc and means you can access it from any internet connection anywhere

2) Very simple interface to use

3) Totally customisable - add your own logo etc

4) Integrates with PayPal

And to top it all off, PTHub visitors can get a
60 Day Free Trial and a monthly discount by using our coupon code PTHUB

Social Networking - Why all Personal Trainers should be doing it

You will know that some of your email enquiries wont buy Personal Training from you straight away. Theres a number of reasons for this…

1. It may be too expensive for them today
2. It may be they are reviewing several trainers in the area
3. It may be that they still arent sure whether they need a Personal Trainer
4. It may be they are a little shy and dont know you yet

Whatever the reason happens to be, YOU should be starting to build a rapport with these enquiries straight away!

There’s a simple step you can follow to build this relationship!

Invite them into your Social Network

When you reply to that initial email enquiry, invite them to follow you on Twitter, to join your Personal Training Face Book Group and to Network with you on Linked In.

You can use this as an ice breaker and build rapport with this potential client. They may even refer you to there own network groups building your following and increasing your Personal Training Clients

To help you make it easy for people to find out how to join your Social Network groups ive added a new feature to PTHub.co.uk personal trainers profiles. You can promote your social network easily to thousands of people monthly.
Watch this short video to see how to add social network features to your profile now

Unique Christmas Present - Personal Training

Have you started marketing yet for the New Year rush of resolutions from people who will sign up with a Personal Trainer and / or Join a Gym so they can shed those extra seasonal pounds they’ve gained ?

Hopefully you’ve answered yes, but if you havent, GET YOUR SKATES ON!

People are already buying Christmas presents and you should be marketing your Personal Training accordingly.

Think about 3 different offerings and offer them on your website (or in your PTHub.co.uk profile)

1) A low cost Personal Trainer Taster session - Say £30. This fits nearly everyones budget
2) A Mid range offering. Say £99. Offering 3 sessions valid in January 2010
3) Your block of 12 Personal Training sessions for the dedicated, who have made a resolution to get in shape in the New Year

Now start promoting
A simple Adwords / Yahoo Search marketing campaign is the easiest way to market this
Target keywords like…
Christmas gift ideas
Unique christmas gift ideas
Christmas present ideas etc etc

get more ideas on Keywords here

Other places to promote…
1) In the Gym
2) Local Offices (Do a flyer drop, but do it NOW)
3) Existing clients for family and friends
4) Online forums and communities (e.g. PTHub profiles will have this feature added within the next week)
5) In Shops, visit a fitness store and offer them a voucher entitling anyone who buys a piece of fitness equipment over £100 a free taster PT session / Consultation. Make it time limited. E.g. They must register there interest within 7 days
6) On a banner outside your house - Looking for a Unique Xmas Present? Buy a Personal Training Session!
7) To your email subscribers (havent got a email subscriber list yet? Shocking! start one now!)
Call your local Newspaper, Lifestyle Magazine, Radio Station or TV News Station and get them thinking about different Christmas presents! Personal Training!!!
9) In your local dentist, beauticians, hairdressers etc etc

Come on get thinking! You could book a years worth of PT in the next 2 months alone!

Why Post in Forums?

We spend time optimising our websites for a few keywords, the sort of keywords most people will use to find us by, but what about all those ‘long tail’ keywords people search everyday that we should also be targeting?

Well this is where forum and blog posting comes in.

Everyday people search the internet for information. Infact more people search for information than people searching to buy, so it makes sense to put ourselves in front of these people as the next time they search they may well be in the mood to buy!

PTHub.co.uk has a Fitness Forum that has an SEO friendly plugin that is dedicated to helping you promote yourself using long tail keywords.

So what is a long tail keyword. Well short tail words are things like Personal Trainer London, or Personal Training, so long tail words are more like short sentences that maybe only a few people are searching for but are still valuable enough to start a quick forum post about, e.g. How to lose weight quickly, How to drop a dress size for my wedding, Which diet works the best etc etc
Its not worth spending days optimising a site for these words, but in a few minutes you can start a forum post and rank for these keywords!!!

Remember…
1) Never spam forums with pointless posts!
2) Ensure you place a signature link - e.g. Personal Training Advice - Link it to your own website
3) Post in the correct forum sections (PTHUB.co.uk has loads of sections dedicated to every fitness niche)
4) Dont duplicate post
5) Check back and follow up on replies

Forum posting can …
1)  Add valuable links to your own website
2) Make you an authority in your industry
3) Build you a following
4) Bring you NEW CLIENTS!!!

Check out PTHub.co.uk Fitness Forum (it ranks on Page one of Google for Personal Trainer and Training Search Terms

A Quick Way To Increase Your Personal Training Revenue

We all want and need to increase our Personal Training Revenue if we want to afford the better things in life and it needn’t be difficult to do this. Here’s just one way to add thousands of pounds of extra income into your bank account.

Instead of selling sessions in your usual 5 or 10 sessions. Only sell in blocks of 6 and 12 and 24
Here’s the maths…
Say i currently sell in blocks of 5 and 10 and i charge £30 per session
Thats £150 for 5 and £300 for 10. Now lets look at it when i sell in blocks of 6 and 12
6 X £30 = £180 and 12 x £30 = £360
Now say my clients on average buy 4 blocks of 12 sessions per year. At £30 per session thats 48 sessions = £1440 compared to 40 (4 blocks of 10 at £30) = £1200

Now say i have 25 regular clients buying 4 blocks of sessions over the year.
£1440 x 25 clients = £36,000 of income compared to
£1200 x 25 clients = £30,000
Now thats an instant increase of £6000 per year!!! Simple!!!

Now some Top Tips.
Clients should buy in blocks of 12, Why?
1) They should train at least twice per week with you
2) 12 sessions will last them 6 weeks (plenty of time to start delivering results!)
3) 4 Blocks of 12 sessions gives you plenty of time to deliver their expected results

Now if a client cant afford to pay for 12 sessions upfront, this is where you offer the option of buying 6 sessions at a time to help spread the cost, but your contract MUST be for 12 sessions!
Never sell single sessions, What can you deliver in 1 session? and where is the committment from the client to achieve their goals if they are only prepared to pay for 1 sessions at a time?

Make the change today and reap the rewards!

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